An Overview of Legal Compliance as a Service

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Entrepreneurs need to focus on growing their business whilst staying compliant. Not investing in compliance can jeopardize the business even when everything else is going well. Investing in compliance means meeting regulatory requirements and proving to regulators or compliance experts that the business is compliant.

Whilst a lot of investment will go into complying with the regulations, businesses tend to struggle with proving their compliance in a continuous way. Compliance as a service (CaaS) software is a great way to comply continuously by moving compliance monitoring to the cloud. CaaS providers tend to automate compliance for technical audits such as ISO. This article explains how contract management can help businesses automate their legal compliance.

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Data protection

Businesses need to prove that they process and manage sensitive data according to data protection laws. In particular, employers will need to prove that their employees have read and understood the company's privacy notice, GDPR privacy standard, and various other policies they may provide during the employee onboarding process.

Legal software like Legislate helps employers issue lawyer-approved data protection documents to employees seamlessly whilst proving their legal compliance. Employees are invited to review and sign the data protection documentation within Legislate so that the employer can satisfy their compliance requirements. Moreover, by using Legislate, employers maintain compliance by centralizing all contract data and by being able to issue new documents if and when legal or regulatory updates occur.

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Risk management

Contracts help establish legal relationships between parties and manage the risk a party is willing to take in the legal relationship should something not go according to plan. If a business does not have clear visibility of its contract terms, it will be difficult for the business to conduct a legal risk assessment. Companies that track contract terms with traditional approaches such as in a spreadsheet are creating a potential risk for their business as contracts are evergreen.

This means that contracts can be amended, broken, or renewed which can render the data in spreadsheets out of date. A better solution is to use contract management software which acts as a central repository for all of a business's contracts. A company that uses contract management software, that allows them to query and track contract terms, is in a much better position to make complete business decisions.

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Software compliance services

The compliance landscape includes both compliance as a service (CaaS) and legal software solutions. Businesses that use cloud-based services can automate their compliance more easily as they can be easily tracked by a CaaS provider.

Compliance as a service tool will, for example, monitor a business's IT information security, the location and data transfers of their cloud provider, or its compliance with specific regulations such as data protection. Legal software on the other hand helps businesses embed compliance into their contracting workflows so that they can prove contracts were signed.

Moreover, legal software helps businesses track the data in their contracts so that they can manage legal risks and make better-informed decisions. Using a cloud-based platform like Legislate helps businesses address compliance concerns cost-effectively. Businesses can create lawyer-approved contracts in the cloud and prove they were read and signed by the counterparty. Businesses can then track the data in their contracts and prove for example that they are complying with gender pay gap requirements or other strategic objectives. The compliance function of the business can also access this data within Legislate or via integrations.

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About Legislate

Legislate is a legal technology startup that allows landlords, letting agents, and small businesses to easily create, sign and manage contracts that are prudent and fair. Legislate’s platform is built on its patented knowledge graph which streamlines the contracting process and aggregates contract statistics to quickly unlock valuable insights. Legislate’s team marries technical and legal expertise to create a painless, smart contracting experience for its users. Legislate is backed by Parkwalk Advisors, Perivoli Innovations, and angel investors.

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Also published here.